The Second World War and The Boom Years
The turn around brought about by the command economy imposed at the beginning of the Second World War was immense. Unemployment virtually disappeared by 1940 as soldiers were recruited and factories turned to war production. Canada was in the unusual situation of helping Britain financially, through a program similar to the American Lend Lease.
In the twenty-five years after the war, there was an immense expansion in the Canadian economy. Unemployment remained low and the end of wartime production was quickly turned over to making consumer goods. Canada, along with many other developed nations, firmly established itself as a welfare state with publicly-funded health care, the Canada Pension Plan, and other programs.
During this period, the Canadian economy became much more closely integrated with the American one as tariff barriers fell and trade agreements like the Canada-United States Automotive Agreement and the "Hyde Park Declaration" were signed.
Read more about this topic: Economic History Of Canada
Famous quotes containing the words world, war, boom and/or years:
“An administrator in a bureaucratic world is a man who can feel big by merging his non-entity in an abstraction. A real person in touch with real things inspires terror in him.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“The man who fears war and squats opposing
My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
But is fit only to rot in womanish peace”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The cohort that made up the population boom is now grown up; many are in fact middle- aged. They are one reason for the enormous current interest in such topics as child rearing and families. The articulate and highly educated children of the baby boom form a huge, literate market for books on various issues in parenting and child rearing, and, as time goes on, adult development, divorce, midlife crisis, old age, and of course, death.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carried off a million years ago.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)